Get an email when a new blog is published

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Sir Walter Scott's House to get £2.45m of Funding

Abbotsford House, near Galashiels, Scotland, the home of the famous Sir Walter Scott, one of Scotland's greatest writers and one of the most influential Scots that ever lived, is to receive funds to pay for essential and urgent repairs to the building and help create a new visitor centre.

With the death in 2004 of Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott, the last direct descendant of Sir Walter to live in Abbotsford, its future was put in doubt.
In January 2007, responsibility for the house and gardens passed from Dame Jean's executors to The Abbotsford Trust, a new charity.

The trustees will be getting £2.45m, but that's a lot less than the £10m they were seeking, which they say is needed to preserve the 19th century mansion and secure the house as a major tourist attraction, in part by creating luxury letting accommodation to generate an income.

The designs for the new visitor centre show it to be a most unattractive building, but its trustees don't accept that, and also say that it's been designed to be unobtrusive and have low running costs.